


Therapy Practice

by wynnebat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Accidental Therapy, Fix-It, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:31:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2403602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he'd been young enough to have dreams, Adam had wanted to become a therapist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Therapy Practice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trickster_Angel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trickster_Angel/gifts).



The first time Lucifer talked to Adam about his feelings, he was experimenting with poking a hole in Adam's soul. Adam wasn't quite aware of his surroundings, but not quite unconscious, residing in the fuzzy state past the point when he could barely even feel the pain anymore. Michael and Lucifer rarely gave him the pleasure of reaching this point—usually, they changed the amount of pain they put him, never giving him a break—and he was trying to savor it when Lucifer spoke in an offhand, less seethingly angry type of way.

"I loved him, you know," Lucifer said, one hand inside Adam's chest cavity.

(What he saw and felt wasn't real, Adam knew that much. It was just his human mind trying to deal with existing outside his human body, trying to fit the pain into images that wouldn't drive him insane. More insane, anyway, because it had been centuries of this and Adam was so tired and pained and lonely that he could barely breathe.)

Maybe that was why he asked, "Michael?" It could've been God, whom Lucifer was talking about, but Adam had seen Lucifer's hate toward Michael burn much more strongly, seen him curse Michael's name far more often than God's. And that kind of hate was bred from the strongest love.

Lucifer—appearing as his human vessel, Nick, to Adam's eyes, because Adam's soul couldn't comprehend his true form (and wasn't that swell, one more thing he couldn't do)—raised an eyebrow. Just one. Adam's heart stopped and started on cue as he remembered exactly why he stopped speaking.

"I knew you weren't mute," Lucifer replied. He scratched his chin, streaking it with Adam's blood. "I suppose you should be rewarded for finally speaking after a century silence. Sam used to scream so nicely, but you barely even respond."

Adam swallowed and closed his eyes, cringing as Lucifer continued trying to tear through his soul. It wouldn't work; souls couldn't tear in half. They could fray, like Sam's and Adam's and Nick's already had, but they couldn't be cut in half. But Lucifer was bored, and Adam was the only one he could torture without a fight. Sam had just vanished one day, and Adam hadn't needed Lucifer's torture to be in pain, because Sam's escape meant their brother had saved him. Just him. Nick had just gone to pieces, his soul giving up its ability to heal. He'd just vanished, little wisps of his soul becoming one with the air. Not bound for heaven or hell, just gone.

To Adam, that sounded better than heaven. At least in nothingness, neither angels nor demons could reach you.

"Let's play a game, shall we?" Lucifer asked, and the pain intensified, growing worse and worse and worse. "I'll talk until you can't hear me anymore." He paused, thinking, and Adam bit his lip and tried to forget how to scream, lest it make Lucifer even angrier. "Michael was the first being I ever saw. I saw him before I ever saw my father. And then I looked back, and there was God. Always behind me, always watching me, always there to catch me before I fell—or before I grew curious. It was only later that I realized Michael didn't care for his younger brothers and their plight; he only saw my father, standing behind us."

It took over an hour for Adam to lose track of what Lucifer was saying.

.

When Adam came back to consciousness, he was lying on a cloud. Soft, warm, cotton-like wisps held him up, and Adam let himself drift for a moment. It reminded him of heaven, what little of heaven he could remember; it reminded him of an old foam mattress, like the kind on his childhood bed. But heaven was a false, fleeting thing, and Adam turned his head to see Michael sitting before him.

"It's all a lie," Michael said abruptly, not turning around from his perch on the edge of the cloud. He lacked the wings and halo, but Adam could almost picture him as a picturesque angel watching over the land beneath the clouds.

Adam tried to lift his head from the ground, but found that he was too tired to raise it more than a few inches. "What is?" he asked, because Michael seemed to want a response. Michael liked responses; it was Lucifer who preferred his silence.

"What Lucifer said. I heard, of course. I couldn't not hear."

Adam nodded, staring at the back of a head identical to his. It had been strange, at first, to see his own face across from him, torturing him in fits of apathy or anger. But he'd gotten used to it.

"He's just... being himself. Morning star, son of dawn, god of lies. Nothing he ever says is true."

Adam nodded.

"He isn't capable of love. Not after deciding to fall."

.

"I am capable of love," Lucifer told Adam as he was flaying him alive.

.

"He left. He left me, he left Gabriel and Raphael, and he started his own family of demons and hellhounds and terrible creatures. He never needed his old one," Michael said, each sentence punctuating a hit to Adam's skin.

.

"How could I not? Our father had asked me to accept humans into my heart, those ugly, flawed creatures polluting the earth. My heart was not large enough to accept them; it had only room for my brothers and sisters," Lucifer said. "And God—but that changed quickly. It's Michael who refused to love me. Michael who would not join me, Michael who locked me in hell."

.

"It broke my heart, locking my brother away," Michael replied through Adam.

It was all he had to say for Lucifer to appear behind him, marking the first time Adam had ever seen them together in hell. Their battles happened at the speed of light, too fast for Adam's eyes to catch, and simple talking had been too much for them until now.

Ignoring his brother, Michael added, "I left heaven soon after. I didn't regret staying; I'd trusted my father to not lead me astray. But once my brother was gone, my life felt lacking. And so I hid myself from angels and demons and humans alike, as a sort of atonement for the guilt I felt."

Lucifer began to walk closer, his footsteps solid and loud. Michael must've felt him, must've heard him, and yet he didn't move. But an angel blade didn't appear in Lucifer's hand. Instead, he rested his hand on Michael's shoulder.

"Brother," Lucifer said, quietly, and with a flutter of wings, they were gone.

Adam waited, shivering, for them to return from a dimension of the cage Adam couldn't see or hear.

.

Michael and Lucifer had never tortured him together. They'd never got along enough to do it, never been amicable enough for cooperation. But when they returned, they walked side by side, their faces calmer than Adam had ever seen. And so, Adam prepared for the worst.

Instead of snapping his fingers to position Adam as he wanted him, Michael stood before him and said, "We have come to an agreement, and I do not foresee any difficulty leaving the cage if we combine our powers. I will grant you the favor of joining us in leaving the cage for your..." Michael paused.

"Help does sound tacky," Lucifer added.

"Service," Michael finally said.

Adam could've laughed. It was the worst kind of torture: the possibility of freedom.

"Do you agree?" Lucifer asked.

Despite himself, Adam hoped. "Yes."

.

Ten years later, Michael and Adam stood outside St. Mary's Convent. Lucifer had disappeared as soon as they'd reached the surface, but Michael lagged behind.

"I would prefer that you didn't starve out here," Michael said, looking around at the wooded area they'd appeared in. "I will bring you to civilization."

"Uh, no, I'm good," Adam said, not stepping back. There was a fine balance between the good kind of subservience and the wrath-inducing kind, and physical movement was usually the trigger. He could almost taste his freedom; he couldn't lose one second of it. "I think the walk will do me good. Clear my head, that sort of thing."

"Very well," Michael said, eyeing him appraisingly, and disappeared on Lucifer's heels. Adam couldn't tell if he truly left or was sticking around as some sort of vaguely guilty gesture, but it didn't matter. He picked a direction and started walking. When he finally saw a gas station, he didn't stop at the phone hanging on its wall.

It was unsettling, to be more alone out of the cage than he was inside. His parents were dead; his friends had moved on. As for the Winchesters... Fuck them. He'd seen what the Winchesters could do. They could move heaven and hell, persuade Death, stop God's plan. They could've gotten him out; they'd chosen not to. And now, Adam had gotten out of hell without their help. He wasn't going to beg for their help.

But there was a wind blowing on his face, and for the first time in centuries, Adam was happy. He was free.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Complete; no sequel planned.


End file.
